1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply) technology and more particularly, to a UPS system with network monitoring and attached battery pack information sensing functions, wherein a battery pack monitoring module of each attached battery pack detects the status information of the respective battery pack body and transmits the detected status information through a LAN (Local Area Network) to a UPS monitoring module of a UPS apparatus, allowing a manager using a web browser of an external equipment to link to a built-in web server of the UPS monitoring module through the LAN to obtain the displayed status information of the attached battery pack.
2. Description of the Related Art
With the vigorous development of modern electronic and information technology, computer designers have been developing systems having the characteristics of strong computing power, high operating speed and small size. Since many electronic devices or equipments use a computer to control their actions or the execution of their functions, the computer plays an important role in the industry. While taking into account the stability of the overall system, as well as the possibility of component damage, shortening of the lifespan and data loss being caused by an interruption of the power supply, the quality of the supply of power will be even more important. In order to solve the above-described power supply problem, the common way is to use a UPS apparatus (UPS) that automatically switches to battery power supply mode or external DC power supply mode to provide emergency power to the load when the input power source fails. The UPS apparatus performs the functions of power supply regulation, surge and noise filtering and lightning protection to provide stabilized power supply to the computer, server, networking equipment, security monitoring system, medical equipment, data storage center and/or industrial equipment for normal operation. In business operation, there are a many electronic devices or equipment integrated in various telecommunication or communication cabinets in the machine room, such as computers or servers, storage systems and equipment (network-attached storage systems, disk arrays, etc.), computer peripherals (modem, switch, or router, etc.) or other information equipment. In order to provide power electronic devices or equipment with longer power backup time, it is the normal way to use a UPS apparatus having the function of supporting attached battery pack. When wishing to expand the capacity of the machine room or to upgrade the information equipment, it simply needs to increase the number of the attached battery packs. Increasing the number of the attached battery packs can enhance the power supply capacity of the UPS apparatus to effectively extend the power backup time, and to well protect more electronic devices or equipment.
Referring to FIGS. 7 and 8, a system architecture diagram of a UPS apparatus, attached battery packs and an external equipment according to the prior art and a block diagram of an attached battery pack according to the prior art are shown. As illustrated, the UPS apparatus A comprises a network monitoring module A 1 linkable to the external equipment C through a local area network, and is electrically coupled with multiple attached battery packs B. Each attached battery pack B comprises a battery cell B 1 and a DC input/output interface B 2 electrically coupled with the battery cell B 1. The connection between the UPS apparatus A and the DC input/output interface B 2 of each attached battery pack B is achieved by a DC bus without any other communication interface means. Therefore, it can simply access to the DC bus to obtain DC voltage from the attached battery packs B without allowing the use of this DC voltage to determine the number of the attached battery packs B. In addition to DC bus connection, some other UPS apparatuses have a built-in communication interface for obtaining the information of each individual attached battery pack. However, the communication interfaces of these UPS apparatuses commonly adopt serial communication interface.
When the manager inputs the IP address of the network monitoring module A1 into the web browser of a computer, notebook computer or any other external equipment C to link to the UPS apparatus, the manager can simply know the DC voltage of the attached battery packs B through the display on the web browser without knowing the information (voltage, internal charging current, temperature) of each individual attached battery pack B. The aforesaid prior art UPS apparatuses allow the manager to obtain the information of each individual attached battery pack through their built-in communication interfaces, however, these built-in communication interfaces are serial communication interface (such as RS-232). If the loop of one attached battery pack is abnormal, the manager will be unable to get the information of the other attached battery packs in the backend or to know the current system status of the UPS apparatus. Thus, the manager cannot replace the failed or damaged attached battery packs B or take the necessary measures at an early stage, causing the overall performance and effectiveness of the UPS apparatus to be limited. An improvement in this regard is necessary.